Ant algorithms help fleet operators halve emissions
Commercial vehicle fleets operating in large towns and cities could halve their emissions and better meet clean air targets using technology inspired by the behaviour of ants.
The software developed by Aston University researchers imitates how ants share knowledge, scaling them up to real world problems - such as optimising routes around busy cities.
Project to show fleet operators symbiotic benefits of EVs
The research team used ‘meta-heuristic technology’ which mimics how colonies of ants solve problems and improve their existing behaviours. According to Aston University, an ant can keep a record of the best solution it has found before passing this knowledge to other ants. This ‘best practice’ permeates through-out the colony, updating its store of know-how in a way comparable to computer algorithms.
The researchers further developed the technique by creating even ‘smarter’ ant algorithms by reducing the amount of decisions they make so that they can solve city-scale fleet routing problems.
Dr Darren Chitty, lead researcher, Aston University said: “Algorithms based on the foraging behaviour of ants have long been used to solve vehicle routing problems, but now we have found how to scale these up to city-size fleets operating over several weeks in much less time than before.
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